Blame Intel I think. It's taking them over 5 years to catch up to ARM in terms of performance/battery life. Windows RT on ARM has decent battery life.

Battery life not performance, surface pro for what its under the hood have a decent battery life also it depends on what you do with it and screeen brightness etc i assume the i5 have a low power mode incases you dont need whole performance.

__________________What is The B.D.S Movement ?Check it out !FREEDOM, JUSTICE & EQUALITY !

It's not a matter of blaming Intel or any entity other than Microsoft. It's a technology that no one has asked for that's being released too soon. The current generation of Ultrabooks and tablet PCs all have better battery life in packages that aren't appreciably bigger. Who's this being marketed to? Someone who's on the go for brief periods during the day?

Not sure what you are confused about, IMO they are providing an ultrabook replacement at an ultrabook price with ultrabook battery life. You can't change the laws of physics, the ivy bridge units can only get so much battery life with today's technology.

If you are concerned about battery life you can get a cloverfield powered windows 8 tablet, same battery life as the ipad and runs pretty much any windows program you throw at it. With that option I find it very hard to figure out why people are freaking out.

__________________
What would the world be like if laptops were released with iOS?

You act as if it will only ever last 4.5 hours regardless of usage patterns.

Both my Surface and my iPad get 10 hours from the stress test the likes of Engadget and The Verge put their devices through. I end up getting a few days on each device with a fair amount of use before they even need charging. So the Pro will last half of a day and a half under my conditions? Sounds good to me.

The only time these benchmarks come close to representing real world use is when you are watching videos. Now where the Surface Pro would fail is if you are on a flight for more than 5 hours and want to watch videos the entire time! :P

why would a Manufacturer lie about battery life on one of their device? Most times, they will lie to us telling us how great the battery life on their devices will vs. real world. Yeah the Surface will get you 8 hours, but we are talking about a x86 Processors (Pro).

why would a Manufacturer lie about battery life on one of their device? Most times, they will lie to us telling us how great the battery life on their devices will vs. real world. Yeah the Surface will get you 8 hours, but we are talking about a x86 Processors (Pro).

So when Apple says their Macbook Air 11" (32% fatter than surface with a lower res screen, no touch, and no active digitizer) gets 5 hours of battery...

Mmm no! For $100 extra I get me a MBA 11" base model and I still be able to get more of the 64GB ssd left.

I am just curious, why are so many people assuming that Windows 8 pro is going to take up exactly half of the SSD space? It doesn't do that in current releases (I am talking Windows 8, not RT), so we have no real reason to expect that much space to be used up.

But anyway, it's Apples to oranges. First off, the resolution on this screen is higher than a MBA. Also, it is a touch screen device, something that you cannot find yet from Apple. Am I saying t is a BETTER product? No, I don't know yet. And you are welcome to prefer the MBA, even before this is released if you wish. But your comparisons are a bit off.

----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by poloponies

Latest on Surface Pro is that it will have battery life of about 4.5 hours. Why is it so hard fro Microsoft to do anything right?

I thought this too, at first. But then when you consider what is under the hood, it's a bit of an easier pill to swallow. Notice I say a bit, because the average consumer is likely going to look at those battery specs and say "forget it". It doesn't matter how good the rest of the specs are.

Fortunately, the average consumer also has the RT tablet to choose from. And, as was pointed out to me in another thread, this device doesn't seem to be targeted for the average consumer at all.

Anyway, a more power efficient chip is just around the horizon. I am still considering an RT tablet, but may hold out for the second gen pro, assuming we see one made. All specs are pretty impressive, but the battery life kills it for me. These days I am around a plug pretty much always, but I don't want to have to be.

__________________
Endorse what you love instead of attacking what you hate.

I am just curious, why are so many people assuming that Windows 8 pro is going to take up exactly half of the SSD space? It doesn't do that in current releases (I am talking Windows 8, not RT), so we have no real reason to expect that much space to be used up.

But anyway, it's Apples to oranges. First off, the resolution on this screen is higher than a MBA. Also, it is a touch screen device, something that you cannot find yet from Apple. Am I saying t is a BETTER product? No, I don't know yet. And you are welcome to prefer the MBA, even before this is released if you wish. But your comparisons are a bit off.

----------

I thought this too, at first. But then when you consider what is under the hood, it's a bit of an easier pill to swallow. Notice I say a bit, because the average consumer is likely going to look at those battery specs and say "forget it". It doesn't matter how good the rest of the specs are.

Fortunately, the average consumer also has the RT tablet to choose from. And, as was pointed out to me in another thread, this device doesn't seem to be targeted for the average consumer at all.

Anyway, a more power efficient chip is just around the horizon. I am still considering an RT tablet, but may hold out for the second gen pro, assuming we see one made. All specs are pretty impressive, but the battery life kills it for me. These days I am around a plug pretty much always, but I don't want to have to be.

Well i know i was comparing apple to orange! However, when I see the price there is no doubt I will go for a MBA! Come on $899 cereal microsoft? Look at how the RT is doing?! Aint going for $499! So this thing is DOA.

I hope they do well. Therefore Apple can catch up with a better similar Mac. Obviously these are aimed to business users, not consumers like Apple has. After a couple of iterations they could get something going on, the situation is that most businesses have contracts already in place and in average they are very slow adopting the new PCs, and replacing them are staggered and takes a full year to roll out a deploy new replacement hardware in global companies. I guesstimate that in about 3yeara we will see this kind of products at Avery airport as we see iPads nowadays, and they will be mainly for business users, company paid 'laptops'. Next news coverage, the MS Surface Pro gets TSA whatever kind of approval. The company that can help business travelers to avoid the hassles of lugging a heavy laptop and provide full PC experience will succeed in the long run in the business market.